Last night was restless. I heard Strudel shouting from the other room. I had that feeling like it was two-ish, because I was deeply groggy like I had been asleep for a while, and yet had not slept enough. She was shouting about a crazy man and sounded wide awake, so I popped in on her.

“There was a crazy man! And I want my mom and dad!” Strudel shouted, bug-eyed and sitting upright stiffly.

“Where was a crazy man?” I said.

“He was in your room, on one of your books,” she said.

I tried to think of which book was giving her the wigs. The cover of one of my magazines? Bill Buford’s vaguely Hitchcockian silhouette? A comic book?

“Pictures aren’t real, honey,” I said.

“I want to see my daddy.”

“Okay.”

“Tell him to go in here,” she said, as if I was a little stupid.

“Daddy’s asleep.”

“Please carry me, because I’m afraid of that crazy man.” Strudel held out her arms to me and I picked her up. She buried her face in my neck.

I set her down between us and she snuggled into me close. And then too far. She edged me over, farther and farther, until she had completely commandeered my pillow. Finally, my poor boob blooped over the edge of the bed and dangled uncomfortably in space. I was sleeping on a tiny pillow with my arm on the side table, propped on the stack of books, one of which contained the “crazy man.” Shauna Reid was at the top of the stack. Could she be the “crazy man?”

Strudel tossed, still awake, and elbowed me in the face again. I gave up and went downstairs, and climbed into bed with Franny. Franny sleeps in my single lady bed, which is a double.

“Would you like a twin bed instead? You could have more floor space in here,” I offered a couple of months ago.

“No, it was your bed,” she said. “Besides, it’s gold.”

So I settle back on it. Comfy. No pointy toddler. Franny, who sleeps like a dead thing, did not move. She was on one side of the bed, properly. Her mouth gaped slightly, making her look a little like a rodent in the dim light. Then she got restless.

At first she did graceful swoops with her arms, like some kind of old tai chi guy on TV. The she started swooping closer to me, and just I was closing my eyes, started elbowing me in the head. Then she got in a few good kicks while I was defending my head. Wax on, sweep the leg. No wonder she wakes up tired and sore sometimes. I thought she was just growing.

Around six she woke up and saw me next to her. She cuddled in and wrapped her arm around my ribs, and stopped trying to beat me up.

We all got up at seven.

“I woke up with the wrong person,” said Companion, hovering at Franny’s door while he carried Strudel.

“Strudel had a bad dream. Do you remember your bad dream, Strudel?” I said to her.

“No,” she said, and blinked.

In Other News

“Are those princess cut earrings, Mom?” Franny said on her return.

I pierced my ears a couple of months ago and put some old diamond earrings in the new holes because they are small and have gold posts. They were a gift from my ex-husband in college, who assumed I would, of course, want diamonds. I think it was our fifth anniversary. I, of course, had been experiencing liberal indoctrination at university, so of course I knew that because of diamonds shortys were armless. I feigned happiness and kept them, and even wore them sometimes.

“No. Er…I don’t know if they’re princess cut,” I said.

“When I was in Hawaii, my dad bought [That Poor Woman] diamond earrings for their anniversary. They are WAI bigger than those.”

“Oookay,” I said.

This is the problem with acquiring a second wife. You have to do everything bigger and better the second time.